In the mid-1770s, leaders of thirteen British colonies stretching most of the length of the Atlantic coast of North America improbably succeeded in breaking loose from imperial control. In the 1780's-90's, they struggled to turn their nation-states into a viable union, capable of survival in a still-hostile world. They looked across the Atlantic to France, seeing that revolution more probably leads to further bloodshed and the imposition of a new form of totalitarianism. Some patriots saw the Constitutional Convention of 1787 as compromising, or even abandoning, the Spirit of '76. Others saw it as.....
