Under the leadership of General George Washington, the Continental Army and Navy defeated the British military, securing the independence of the Thirteen Colonies.

The 1780s marked an economic downturn for the United States due to debts incurred during the Revolutionary War, Congress' inability to levy taxes, and significant inflation of the Continental dollar.

These acts provoked an ideological conflict between Great Britain and the Thirteen Colonies regarding the nature of the Crown's authority over colonists.

[3] Protests by the colonists began as a demand for equal rights under the British constitution, but as the dispute progressed, they took a decidedly republican political viewpoint.

[7] In June 1775, George Washington, a charismatic Virginia political leader with combat experience, was unanimously appointed commander of a newly organized Continental Army.

The plan called for two British armies to converge on Albany, New York from the north and south, dividing the colonies in two and separating New England from the rest.

[30][31] Throughout the Revolutionary War, smaller battles and ambushes were fought west of the Appalachian Mountains along the southwestern area of Canada and in American territories.

[32] In the final years of the war, Great Britain stopped providing much of its support for Native American tribes, and the United States won in the western theater with strict terms of surrender.

[33] Except for an attempt to take Charleston in 1776, Great Britain did not attack the southern states of Georgia or South Carolina in the early years of the war.

[41] King George III and Prime Minister Lord North wished to mount another campaign, but Parliament overruled them, forbidding any further conflict.

[45] Some elements of the treaty were controversial among Americans, including those that recognized the monetary debts owed to Loyalists and those that critics felt challenged the status of each state government as a sovereign entity.

[46] On November 25, 1783, George Washington led a procession through New York City on horseback as the final British soldiers boarded their boats to leave the harbor.

Mutinies occurred in Pennsylvania and New Jersey in January 1781, soldiers marched on the capital in June 1783, and a coup against General Washington was considered among military officers in Newburgh.

[50] The Shelburne ministry had been lenient in the negotiation of the Treaty of Paris, but this proved controversial, prompting a change in government that resulted in much colder relations with the United States.

[45] As economic conditions worsened, Congress failed to repay its debts to the countries that provided military support during the war: France, Spain, and the Netherlands.

[81] In order to attract Northern settlers, Congress outlawed slavery in the Northwest Territory, though it also passed a fugitive slave law to appease the Southern states.

[90] It also caused a labor shortage as workers enlisted in the Patriot and Loyalist militaries, ending a decades-long trend of industrial expansion in the Mid-Atlantic.

[95] The economy of the early United States was heavily agricultural, but it also involved other forms of resource extraction, such as lumber, fishing, and fur.

The revolution required American merchants to rebuild connections with global markets, as trade had previously been facilitated under the flag of Great Britain.

[96] When the war ended, the Treaty of Paris allowed British creditors to call in debts from the American market, triggering a depression.

Political essays such as The American Crisis, Common Sense, and The Federalist Papers were influential in shaping the early United States.

Full-length books also addressed political concepts regarding the revolution, including Letters from an American Farmer by J. Hector St. John de Crèvecœur and Notes on the State of Virginia by Thomas Jefferson.

Poets such as John Trumbull, Philip Freneau and Hugh Henry Brackenridge wrote of nationalist ideas about an independent United States.

[101] The most prominent American dramatist during the revolutionary era was Mercy Otis Warren, whose plays included The Adulateur, The Group, and The Blockheads.

[102] Visual art was influenced by the literature of European aestheticians, including Charles Alphonse du Fresnoy, Roger de Piles, Jonathan Richardson, and Johann Joachim Winckelmann.

John Trumbull and Charles Willson Peale were prominent painters in the first years of the United States; as supporters of republicanism, they are both known for their respective portraits of George Washington.

Supporters of the British Empire commonly included merchants and farmers that felt they benefited from colonial rule as well as slaves that hoped loyalty to Britain would bring them freedom.

The Revolutionary War drew attention away from the Pope, making King George III the most prominent foreign opponent in the minds of Americans.

[119] The American Revolution made the issue of slavery more prominent, as some writers began to criticize what they saw as hypocrisy in supporting liberty while owning slaves, causing the institution to lose popularity in the Northern United States.

Delegates at the Constitutional Convention were divided on the morality of slavery, and there was also debate about whether slaves should be counted when allocating proportional representation to each state.