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I. Forming a New Nation
13 colonies
- a. 13 colonies independent= United States of America
- i. Fear of concentrated power and concern for their own interests caused little enthusiasm for establishing a united nation with a strong central government
- 1. Articles of Confederation (1781) didn’t provide strong central governmentà new movement for national government
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Summer of 1787
- a. Summer of 1787: 55 delegates attended convention in Philadelphia to revise the Articles of Confederation
- i. Convention’s delegates—wealthy, politically experienced, well educated—rejected revision and devised new constitution
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Proposed Constitution
- a. Proposed constitution= central government different from/ superior to governments of individual states
- i. National government given the power to levy taxes, raise a national army, regulate domestic and foreign trade, and create a national currency
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Central Government
- 1. President= executive with power to execute laws, veto legislation acts, supervise foreign affairs, direct military forces
- 2. Legislative= second branch composed of Senate, elected by state legislatures, and the House of Representatives, elected by people
- 3. Supreme Court and other courts necessary by Congress=third branch
- a. Enforce Constitution as “supreme law of land”
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Approved?
- a. US Constitution approved by states in 1788
- i. Important to success= promise to add bill of rights to it as new government’s first piece of business
- 1. March 1789, new Congress proposed 12 amendments to Constitution; the ten that were ratified by states called Bill of Rights
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Bill of Rights
- a. Freedom of speech, religion, press, petition, and assembly, bear arms, protection against unreasonable searches and arrests, trial by jury, due process of law, protection of property rights
- i. Rights derived from natural rights philosophy of 18th c. philosophes
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Impact of the American Revolution on Europe
1789
- a. 1789: beginning of a new USA and eruption of French Revolution
- i. American Revolution impact on Europeans
- 1. Books, newspapers, magazines provided accounts of American events
- a. Era of significant changes, including new arrangements in international politics
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Impact of the American Revolution on Europe
What did it prove?
- a. It proved to many Europeans that the liberal political ideas of the Enlightenment were not vapid utterances of intellectuals
- i. The rights of man, ideas of liberty and equality, popular sovereignty, the separation of powers, and freedom of religion, thought, and press were not utopian ideals
- 1. Americas created new social contract embodied in a constitution and made concepts of liberty and representative government a reality
- a. New world of Enlightenment could be achieved
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Impact of the American Revolution on Europe
Information
- a. Information received from returning soldiers, especially French officers in the American War
- i. One, the aristocratic marquis de Lafayette, volunteered for service in America in order to get back at England, France’s old enemy
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Impact of the American Revolution on Europe
Lafayette
- 1. Closely associated with Washington?, he returned to France with ideas of individual liberties and notions of republicanism and popular sovereignty
- 2. Became member of Society of Thirty, a club composed of people from the Paris salons
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Impact of the American Revolution on Europe
Lovers of Liberty
- a. These “lovers of liberty” were influential in early stages of French Revolution
- i. Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen showed unmistakable signs of influence of American Declaration of Independence as well as the American state constitutions
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Impact of the American Revolution on Europe
American Revolution vs. French
- a. American Revolution less important than French
- i. French: more complex, more violent, far more radical in attempt to construct new political and social order
- b. French revolution as a model of revolution for Europe and much of the rest of the world
- i. To many, it remains the political movement that truly inaugurated the modern political world
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