The 18th-century British understanding of the principle of balanced government, a concept going back to Aristotle, saw the genius of the British constitution in the balance of interests among the One (King), the Few (Lords) and the Many (Commons). Compare this tradition of balanced government with John Adams' Adams, Thoughts on Government, 1776

 Montesquieu's misreading of the British constitutional system gave the concept of the separation of powers

Enlightenment thinkers provided models for order, reason, and progress in government.  They laid the theoretical basis for worldwide republican Revolution

Colonial legacy of a written charters of government

The British colonial legacy was the most fruitful source of governmental concepts.  Americans absorbed the common-law tradition and a body of civil liberties obtained by Englishman in the 17th century.  George Mason's Virginia Declaration of Rights in 1776 is an example.

A constitution is a form of higher law, superior to ordinary legislation

The authority to establish Constitution came from the people

All the states submitted the new documents to popular vote for approval

All the states submitted the new documents to popular vote for approval.

The social dynamics: the traditional elites and new people brought into politics by the revolutionary movement had to work out some system of cooperation.  So-called popular leaders tried to expand the suffrage and make access to public office easier.  Most leaders wanted to preserve as much as they could of the past.

Georgia, like Pennsylvania also a state with a large frontier population, had a similar experience.  In 1775 a small group of radicals set up a council of safety and took control of the government which had been firmly Royalist.  In 1776 the council issued call for a convention and allowed all white male taxpayers to vote for the delegates. The Constitution that emerged in 1777  had a unicameral assembly and almost universal white manhood suffrage.  But conservatives regained power and in 1789 revised the constitution, patterned on the new federal Constitution.

Delaware and New Hampshire also wrote liberal constitutions.

Virginia and North Carolina wrote middle-of-the-road constitutions with powerful legislatures and weak executives.  The system of representation by counties, rather than population, insured a greater influence for the Tidewater regionat the expense of the West and Piedmont.  The traditional Whiggish  Whig elite, which had controlled the colonial assemblies and managed the Revolution, dominated the politics of Virginia and North Carolina for half a century after the  Revolution.

	Virginia Constitution, 1776
	Jefferson's Draft Bill for Religious Freedom, 1779 , although it was not adopted, shows the movement to change the traditional relationship between church and state in the early republic

Massachusetts Constitition.  Drafted by John Adams in 1780 this was a moderately conservative Constitution based on their colonial charter.  It provided for an  independent judiciary, and popularly elected governor with veto powers.  Adams was concerned for a separation of legislative, executive, and judicial functions. Adams made few concessions to democracy. A commercial elite dominated the politics of the state in the postwar years, managing debts and taxes to suit your interest. 

Shays' Rebellion was a reaction against this situation. Another presentation.

New York, Maryland, and South Carolina wrote the most conservative constitutions. They had high property qualifications for voting and holding office. They gave legislative power to the upper house as well as the lower house and imposed  rigid property qualifications for senators.

New York Constitution, 1777

All embraced the separation of powers and an independent judiciary

Except in Massachusetts and New York, the powers granted to governors made them relatively weak.

These first constitutions were not too radical but over the following decades more changes made the balance of power among the branches of government more equal. In the colonial period the Councils (Upper Houses) were dominated by lawyers, merchants, and large land holders. After 1776 a restricted suffrage added more farmers. Gradually the traditional governing elite weakened as voters and leadership increasingly overlapped and more people from lower in the social scale came to participate.  Just as the popular appeals of revolutionary Patriot propaganda stimulated political awareness, so did popular  participation come to increase the power of the common people. This was a longer-term legacy of the constitutional experimentation of the posts-war years.

The basic question was whether the thirteen republics could transcend their various interests and form a nation.

At bottom the revolutionary movement had  developed out of a constitutional struggle over the rights of individual colonies and the central government of the Empire.

During the war the Continental Congress served as a kind of government for the emerging republic but it had few real powers and the states guarded their sovereignty jealously.

Between 1783 and 1787 Americans had to grapple with the major issue in Whig ideology: How to strike the right balance between power and liberty.

Deficiencies of the Confederation