The American Revolution and the Constitution

The year 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of American independence, yet the founding is controversial now in ways it has not been in decades. The American Enterprise Institute offers a major intellectual and educational project to reintroduce Americans to the unique value of their national inheritance.

In the seventh volume of this series, scholars of American history, law, and politics discuss how the American Revolution unleashed the forces of constitution-making in the United States. As states erected new governments in the wake of independence, they worked to combine traditions of colonial self-government with both classical and novel political theories.

Studying the revolutionary period shows how it gave birth to a constitutional culture that shaped the delegates and debates that would forge the nation's enduring Constitution in 1787.