Except for America Revolutions Have Failed: Prologue Part 1

Washington at Valley Forge

The exception clarifies the rule.

In order to see why one case stands apart we need to set three episodes side by side: the American Revolution (1765–1791), the French Revolution (1789–1799), and Europe’s revolutionary year of 1848. We’ll track what each promised, how it governed, and what endured.

The American Revolution: A Revolt for Law

1) Pressure Builds (1765–1775)

Britain didn’t meet mobs first; it met petitions, pamphlets, and assemblies.

• Stamp Act (1765). Parliament taxes printed materials. Colonists answer with the Stamp Act Congress and the rallying cry “no taxation without representation.” The key is form: resolutions, not riots.

• Townshend Duties (1767) and the Tea Act (1773) escalate tensions. You get flashpoints—the Boston Massacre (1770) and the Boston Tea Party (1773)—but also institutional coordination via Committees of Correspondence linking colonies.

• Coercive (Intolerable) Acts (1774) punish Boston—and unify the colonies. The First Continental Congress (1774) asserts rights and organizes boycotts; Lexington and Concord (April 1775) turn crisis into open war.

Thomas Paine’s Common Sense (Jan. 1776) converted grievances into a constitutional argument for independence. This was revolution by reasoned brief before battlefield victory.

When Americans first took up arms against Britain in 1775, most people still thought of themselves as loyal subjects of the king. They were angry about taxes, trade restrictions, and soldiers in their towns, but they were mostly asking for reforms within the British Empire, not a complete break from it. Common Sense, published in January of 1776 changed the mindset of the majority. It turned scattered complaints into a clear, constitutional case for independence, and it did so before any decisive military victory on the battlefield.

Paine began where ordinary people lived: with their frustrations. The colonies had endured the Stamp Act, the Townshend Duties, the Tea Act, and the Coercive Acts. Many colonists were tired of “taxation without representation,” royal vetoes of colonial laws, and British troops enforcing policies they never voted on. These were the real and painful grievancesof the people, but that alone did not equal a revolution. People can be angry for a long time without changing their system of government.

However, Paine was able to connect those grievances to a deeper argument about how government ought to work. He asked: What is the purpose of government? Who should hold power? How should a just political system be structured? By answering those questions, he turned colonial anger into a constitutional argument.

First, he attacked monarchy itself. Paine argued that kingship is not just unfair it was irrational and unbiblical. Why should one family rule over millions forever? Hereditary monarchy, he said, is a system built on accident of birth, not on reason or consent. For colonists raised to respect the king, this was a shocking but clarifying claim. It undercut the traditional loyalty that had kept many from even thinking about separation.

Second, Paine argued that the British constitution had failed the colonies. Many Americans still believed Britain had the “freest constitution in the world.” Paine disagreed. If the British system truly protected liberty, he asked, why were the colonies being taxed without representation? Why were their legislatures overridden? By pointing out these contradictions, he showed that the existing constitutional order no longer served American interests.

Third, Paine sketched a positive alternative. He did not simply say, “Leave Britain.” He explained how Americans could build their own republic with a written constitution, regular elections, and representatives chosen by the people. He suggested (and this is a bit of an oversimplification) that the continental congress be transformed into a permanent governing body. In doing this, he moved the debate from “Should we stay or go?” to “What kind of government should we create?”

This is what it means to call Common Sense “revolution by reasoned brief.” Paine wrote like a lawyer and a preacher combined. He presented evidence, made logical arguments, appealed to scripture and to common experience, and laid out a vision for a new political order. All of this happened months before the Declaration of Independence and long before the American army could claim real success in the war.

In short, Paine helped win the revolution in people’s minds before it was ever won on the battlefield. By transforming grievances into a coherent constitutional argument, Common Sense prepared ordinary Americans to see independence not as a reckless gamble, but as the logical and necessary step toward a just and stable government of their own.

2) A War for Established Rights (1776–1783)

The Americans present rebellion as a lawsuit before the world.

• Declaration of Independence (July 4, 1776). This was a bill of particulars listing long-standing liberties the Crown had violated. Independence is framed as restoration of rights, not the invention of a new moral order.

• Local self-government runs the war. State legislatures raised troops and taxes using the institutions that already existed. Civil courts kept operating ensuring that the citizenry could rely on the maintenance of the law while the armies marched. The Articles of Confederation (ratified 1781) were able to coordinate diplomacy and war across thirteen largely sovereign states. The Revolution was fought through largely existing legal and political institutions that already existed. This continuity of institutions is a key reason the postwar settlement could move from confederation to constitution.

• Valley Forge (1777–78) This is often remembered only as period of intense suffering through cold, hunger and disease. What is often overlooked is that this was the moment when the Continental Army became a real institution. Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben arrived on the scene and instituted three monumental things: 1) Standardized drill for loading, firing, marching, and using the bayonet. 2) Trained trainers creating a repeatable training pipeline. 3) Codified procedures to enforce camp sanitation, inspections, discipline, and a clear chain of commands. He put this into a manual “Regulations for the Order and Discipline for the Troops of the States.” This “Blue Book” guided U.S. Army practice for decades.

• Newburgh Conspiracy (1783). With the war essentially won, many Continental Army officers had not been paid and feared Congress would renege on promised pensions. Washington forbade an unauthorized meeting and instead called a lawful assembly, urging patience, honor, and obedience to civil authority. He reminded them their cause was a republic under laws, not a dictatorship under generals. In the oft-recounted moment, Washington pulled out a letter from Congress, put on his spectacles, and said, ‘Gentlemen, you must pardon me. I have grown gray in your service and now find myself growing blind.’ The room softened, the appeal landed, and the officers affirmed their loyalty to Congress.” with an appeal to civilian supremacy. The sword yields to the law.

• Treaty of Paris (1783) recognizes U.S. independence. A few outcomes of this were that Britain formally recognized the United States as “free, sovereign, and independent.” The treaty fixed U.S. borders (Atlantic to the Mississippi River; Canada to Spanish Florida), preserved pre-war private debts on both sides, and called on Congress to recommend the restoration of Loyalist property and an end to further prosecutions. Britain agreed to cease hostilities and withdraw troops from U.S. territory (though some posts lingered, prompting later conflicts).

An iconic illustration of the American mindset came when Washington resigned his commission to Congress at Annapolis on December 23, 1783. It was a deliberate act of restraint, rare in revolutions, and foundational for later stability.”

3) From Confederation to Constitution (1787–1791)

After the war for independence was won, America didn’t discard the existing system in favor of a dictator. Instead, Americans repaired the process moving from the weak wartime arrangement to a stronger, constitutional frame.

The Articles of Confederation proved to be too weak for a federal government for a variety of reasons.

• No power to tax. It could only request money from states (requisitions). States often refused or paid late.

•  Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben power to regulate interstate or foreign commerce. States threw up tariffs against each other, undercut treaties, and created trade friction that stifled growth.

• No national executive or national courts. Congress could pass resolutions but had no arm to enforce them and no uniform way to adjudicate disputes.

• There was a debt and credit crisis. War debts piled up; paper currency had collapsed; the new nation’s creditworthiness was shaky.

• There were Diplomatic weaknesses. Britain stalled on evacuating some frontier forts; Spain closed the Mississippi at times—testing a confederation that couldn’t act decisively.

Shays’ Rebellion (1786–87) was the wake-up call. In western Massachusetts, hard-pressed farmers were facing high state taxes, debt, and foreclosures. The rebellion, organized under Daniel Shays to shut down courts so judgments couldn’t be entered. In January 1787 they marched toward the Springfield arsenal, but militia under Gen. William Shepard repulsed them. The state then used militia, partly financed by private subscription under Gen. Benjamin Lincoln, to restore order.

Here is why Shay’s Rebellion mattered. It wasn’t a national uprising, but it exposed the system’s fragility: under the Articles, the central government lacked the capacity to stabilize finance, coordinate responses, or ensure uniform justice. Leaders across the states feared a slide from revolution to anarchy or, in reaction, into authoritarian crackdowns; concerns that helped propel the 1787 Constitutional Convention.

The Constitutional Convention (1787) intentionally designed the government as a federal republic with five key elements.

• Separation of powers (horizontal split). Government power is divided among three branches so that no single body can rule unchecked: Legislative (Congress) makes laws. Executive (President) enforces laws. Judicial (Courts) interprets laws. Each branch is armed with checks on one another.

• Bicameralism (two chambers of Congress). Lawmaking must pass through two differently constituted houses to slow fads and force coalition: The House of Representatives chosen by population with short terms. The Senate giving equal state representation to every state with longer terms than the house of Representatives.

• Independent judiciary. Federal judges serve “during good behavior” (i.e., life tenure) with protected pay for the purpose of insulating them from political pressure so they can enforce the Constitution, even against the other branches.

• Enumerated powers (limited national scope). The federal government gets a specific defined list of powers (e.g., to tax, coin money, regulate interstate and foreign commerce, raise armies, conduct diplomacy). Anything not granted is reserved to the states or the people.

• Federalism (vertical split of sovereignty). Power is divided between the national government and the states. The national level handles genuinely national matters (defense, foreign affairs, interstate trade, currency). The states retain broad “police powers” over local health, safety, education, property, and criminal law. The Supremacy Clause ensures that when the federal government acts within its enumerated powers, federal law prevails.

By dispersing power horizontally (among the branches) and vertically (between national and state governments), the Constitution makes tyranny harder, channels conflict into rules and creates a system that can adapt by process (i.e. elections, courts, amendments) rather than by crisis or coup.

After the Convention proposed the Constitution, it wasn’t law yet. It had to be ratified by special state conventions. (1787-1788) The requirement was that it had to be passed by nine of the thirteen states. This sparked national debate about the new frame of government. There were two schools of thought.

• Federalists (Hamilton, Madison, Jay, etc.) argued the new Constitution was necessary and safe: it fixed the Articles’ weakness, divided power through checks and balances, and would better secure liberty. They wrote the Federalist Papers to explain and defend the design (e.g., No. 10 on factions; No. 51 on checks and balances).

• Anti-Federalists (writing under pen names like Brutus, Cato, Centinel) warned about consolidated power, a standing army, the necessary and proper and supremacy clauses, and, crucially, the absence of a bill of rights. They feared that ordinary liberties and state authority would be lost.

Several key states, Massachusetts (Feb. 6, 1788), Virginia (June 25, 1788), and New York (July 26, 1788), ratified the Constitution while recommending amendments. This pressure helped lead to the Bill of Rights. North Carolina withheld ratification in 1788 and joined on Nov. 21, 1789, after Congress moved on amendments. The settlement came when Congress proposed twelve amendments (1789) and ten were ratified as the Bill of Rights (1791).

This history shows that the American constitutional order was built for lawful self-correction—through elections, federalism, separation of powers, and the Article V amendment process, making this system of government unusually durable.

4) Early Stress Tests (1790s): Law Over Fury (5 Examples)

The new frame of Constitutional Government survives precisely because it channels conflict.

• Hamilton’s program (1790–91)—funding the national debt, assuming state debts, creating a Bank of the United States.

Between 1790 and 1791, Alexander Hamilton executed a linked set of financial reforms that turned a fragile confederation into a credit-worthy nation. First, he proposed funding the national debt at par (face value). Under the Confederation, wartime IOUs had sunk to deep discounts; the Funding Act of 1790 committed the new federal government to pay those obligations at full face value (with arrears of interest). By keeping promises in cash rather than rhetoric, bondholders were paid and investors, domestic and foreign, began to believe U.S. credit was real.

Alexander Hamilton

Next came assumption of state debts. Several states still carried heavy war debts while others (notably Virginia) had paid much down. Hamilton rolled these liabilities into the federal ledger so that creditors dealt with one stronger debtor: the national government. This unified the credit market, tied the interests of financiers to federal stability, and strengthened the center. The political price was the famous 1790 “dinner table bargain,” exchanging votes for assumption with the decision to situate the national capital on the Potomac.

Hamilton then created the First Bank of the United States (1791), a public–private institution to hold federal deposits, issue banknotes, and discipline the currency and credit system. The bank provided a reliable payments mechanism, a market for federal bonds, and a central financial hub that made tax collection and both wartime and peacetime finance workable. In short, it replaced scattered, uneven practices with a coherent monetary backbone.

To support all of this, Hamilton secured stable revenues. The tariff of 1789 and targeted excise taxes (including the whiskey excise of 1791) provided predictable cash flow to service interest and fund operations. Debt service was no longer wishful thinking; it was budgeted.

These measures restored credit and built predictable finance for four reasons. Funding at par established a reputation for paying on time; assumption ended the patchwork of state IOUs and created a national bond market with transparent prices; the Bank standardized note issue and anchored a more stable currency; and steady, rule-based revenues reassured lenders they would, in fact, be paid.

There was serious pushback. Jefferson and Madison questioned the constitutionality of the Bank, disliked the tilt toward commerce and finance, and argued assumption rewarded speculators and centralized power. Yet the program worked: U.S. securities appreciated, European capital flowed in, and the federal government moved from improvisation to a predictable financial regime—a cornerstone for the republic’s long-term stability and growth.

• Whiskey Rebellion (1794). The government enforces law with militia, then grants pardons illustrating authority with restraint and not emergency tribunals.

In 1791 Congress put an excise tax on distilled spirits to fund Hamilton’s finance program. In western Pennsylvania (and parts of KY/VA), small farmers who turned grain into whiskey saw it as unfair. From 1791–94, resistance escalated that included tax dodging, intimidation, attacking officials (e.g., the assault on inspector John Neville). and obstructing federal writs.

After a U.S. marshal was threatened while serving process, Washington issued proclamations ordering dispersal, then, under the Militia Act, federalized about 13,000 state militiamen (from PA, NJ, MD, VA). Washington (with Hamilton) personally reviewed the force; it marched west in autumn 1794. The show of strength ended the uprising with minimal bloodshed; the armed resistance quickly melted away.

The government enforced the law (collected the tax, restored court process) but showed restraint by keeping everything inside ordinary, civilian law:

Arrests went to civilian courts and there were no revolutionary tribunals or mass purges.

Only a small number of people were tried; two men were convicted of treason and Washington pardoned (Philip Vigol/Weigel and John Mitchell).

No opposition party was outlawed and no newspapers shuttered wholesale.

This mattered because the Whiskey Rebellion set the precedent that constitutionally enacted laws will be enforced, and that the federal government can lawfully use force and then lay it down.

It showed the balance the founders intended: energy in the executive to suppress insurrection, coupled with restraint (civilian courts, limited prosecutions, and clemency) rather than a permanent state of emergency.”

• Jay Treaty (1794–95). Bitterly controversial, but resolved by constitutional process (treaty clause, Senate ratification).

After the Revolution, the United States and Britain still had festering disputes: British troops lingered in several frontier forts; American neutral ships trading with France and French colonies were seized on the high seas; pre-war private debts remained unpaid on both sides; and trade frictions mounted. President Washington sent Chief Justice John Jay to negotiate a settlement.

Chief Justice John Jay

The resulting Jay Treaty set a timetable for British evacuation of the northwestern forts, created mixed commissions to adjudicate pre-war debts and American claims for ship seizures, and opened limited trade with the British West Indies. But it did not secure everything Americans wanted; most notably, it left impressment (the British practice of seizing sailors from American vessels) unresolved.

Many Americans judged the terms too favorable to Britain and too cool toward France. Public meetings, pamphlets, and newspapers blasted the agreement, and Jay was burned in effigy in several towns.

This conflict was resolved by the “constitutional process.”

Treaty Clause (Article II): Washington submitted the treaty to the Senate, which debated it in executive session and in June 1795, gave the required two-thirds consent, narrowly, and with a condition (suspending one article pending further negotiation).

House appropriation fight:  Because implementation required funds, the House of Representatives demanded the negotiation papers and claimed a role. Washington refused (an early assertion of executive privilege over diplomatic instructions), arguing the House had no role in making treaties, only in funding them. After fierce debate, the House voted to appropriate the money anyway (spring 1796).

Constitutional, not coercive. The dispute was settled through the text and procedures of the Constitution (treaty submission, Senate consent, House appropriations) not through street tribunals or emergency powers.

The Jay Treaty avoided war with Britain, stabilized trade for a time, and, most importantly set precedents that the treaty power belongs to the President + Senate, the House controls the purse, and inter-branch disputes are resolved by votes and procedures, not by coercion.

This is an early and excellent example of intense national conflict channeled and resolved through constitutional forms.

• Peaceful transfer (1801). After a brutal election, power passes from Adams to Jefferson without exiles or purges, what Jefferson called the “Revolution of 1800,” achieved without revolution.

The election of 1800 was harsh. Federalists (Adams) and Democratic-Republicans (Jefferson) fought a vicious campaign over taxes, the Alien and Sedition Acts, relations with Britain/France, as well as the size of the army.

The result produced an Electoral College tie between Jefferson and his running mate. Before passage of the Twelfth Amendment in 1804 each elector cast two votes for president with the runner-up becoming the Vice President. Each party tried to run tickets, but electors had to withhold one vote from the running mate to avoid a tie.

In 1800, every Republican elector voted for both Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr, giving each 73 electoral votes. Because the votes were undifferentiated (not labeled “for President” vs. “for Vice President”), Jefferson and his own running mate tied, throwing the election to the House of Representatives. Jefferson was finally chosen after 36 ballots.

No coups, no purges, no exiles. The outgoing Federalists ceded power to their opponents, the first time in U.S. history and rare in the revolutionary era.

Rule of law held. The crisis was resolved inside constitutional procedures (contingent election, House balloting), not by force.

Civic tone reset. In his First Inaugural, Jefferson signaled reconciliation: “We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists.”

Jefferson called this the Revolution of 1800. What he meant was that it was a change of ruling party and direction accomplished without violence. In other words, a revolution of ballots, not bayonets. This event proved that the new constitutional system could transfer power between bitter rivals while preserving rights and institutions.  

• Judicial review (Marbury v. Madison, 1803). Courts assert law’s supremacy over will.

On his way out of office in 1801, President John Adams signed a flurry of last-minute judicial commissions, including one appointing William Marbury a justice of the peace. The incoming Jefferson administration, through Secretary of State James Madison, withheld Marbury’s commission. Marbury sued directly in the U.S. Supreme Court for a writ of mandamus (an order compelling delivery), relying on a clause in the Judiciary Act of 1789 that seemed to give the Court that power.

In Marbury v. Madison (1803), Chief Justice John Marshall reasoned as follows: (1) Marbury had a legal right to the commission; (2) a violated right ordinarily implies a legal remedy; (3) but the Supreme Court could not issue that remedy in this case, because the statute purporting to give the Court original jurisdiction for such writs conflicted with the Constitution, which specifies (and was read to exhaust) the Court’s original jurisdiction; therefore (4) that portion of the 1789 Act was unconstitutional and void.

Marshall then stated the principle of judicial review: “It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.” When a statute conflicts with the higher law of the Constitution, courts must apply the Constitution and set the statute aside. In that sense, courts assert law’s supremacy over will: the Court declined to do what might have pleased Marbury (and embarrassed Jefferson) because the Constitution forbade it. No political will (neither Congress nor the President) can override the Constitution, and the courts will enforce that hierarchy.

The decision entrenched judicial review of federal statutes strengthening the idea of a written constitution as supreme law (binding even when inconvenient) and displayed both judicial restraint (denying the writ) and judicial power (voiding the statute).

5) Three Major Outcomes, Plus One More, That Meet the Test

• Stability. Peaceful, regular elections beginning with Washington to Adams in 1797 quickly became the norm, and the army remained firmly under civilian law.

• Human rights trajectory. As posited in the introduction the American system has been proved to be repairable by law: end of the international slave trade (1808); abolition of slavery (13th, 1865); citizenship and equal protection (14th, 1868); voting regardless of race (15th, 1870); women’s suffrage (19th, 1920). Change comes by amendment, statute, and court, not another revolution.

• Economy. Secure property, enforceable contracts, credible public finance, and open markets foster broad-based growth. Because of these the U.S. became a magnet for labor and capital.

• Religious freedom. Another major gain was legally protected pluralism. The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom (1786) disestablished the church in Virginia and guaranteed free exercise, and the First Amendment (1791) barred a national establishment while protecting free exercise. Together they expanded rights by law, securing religious liberty without a national church or sacralized politics.

Key Takeaway

The American Revolution changed who ruled without destroying how the law ruled. It shifted sovereignty from a distant crown to “We the People,” but it did so by building a constitutional process rather than empowering a strongman. The new frame (checks and balances, separation of powers, federalism, an independent judiciary, and amendability) was designed to keep power divided and answerable.

Because the regime was a process and not a person, it could repair itself by law.

Early tests prove the point: the Bill of Rights (1791) narrowed government power; the Whiskey Rebellion (1794) showed laws would be enforced by civilian authority and then the sword put away; Marbury v. Madison (1803) established that the Constitution outranks ordinary statutes; and the peaceful transfer of power in 1801 showed rivals could win and lose without purges.

Later generations have used the same tools (amendments, statutes, and courts) to expand liberty: ending the slave trade (1808), abolishing slavery and securing equal protection (13th–14th Amendments), protecting voting regardless of race (15th), and recognizing women’s suffrage (19th).

In short, the American Revolution made process the regime. Authority would change hands, rights would widen, and crises would be handled within the constitutional system not by tearing it down. That is why it has endured.

Coming Prologue Part 2: The French Revolution: Liberty Devours Her Children