American Enterprise Institute

The American Revolution and America’s Role in the World

The Revolution and the Birth of American International Relations Notes

  1. Richard Henry Lee, “Resolution of Independence Moved by R. H. Lee for the Virginia Delegation,” Founders Online, June 7, 1776, https://founders.archives.gov/
    documents/Jefferson/01-01-02-0159    ; and Thomas Paine, “Common Sense,” in The Complete Writings of Thomas Paine, ed. Philip S. Foner (Citadel Press, 1945), 1:43, https://cdn.mises.org/The%20Complete%20Writings%20of%20Thomas%20Paine%2C%20Volume%201_2.pdf.
  2. Continental Congress, “IV. The Declaration as Adopted by Congress,” July 6, 1775, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-01-02-0113-0005.
  3. Worthington Chauncey Ford, ed., Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774–1789, vol. 2, 1775: May 10–September 20 (Government Printing Office, 1905), 144–45, 147,
    150–51, 153, 155.
  4. George Washington, “Letter to the Inhabitants of Canada,” Founders Online, September 14, 1775, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-01-02-
    0358    .
  5. Worthington Chauncey Ford, ed., Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774–1789, vol. 1, 1774 (Government Printing Office, 1904), 111; Ford, ed., Journals of the Continental Congress, 2:68–70; and Worthington Chauncey Ford, ed., Journals of the Continental Congress 1774–1789, vol. 3, 1775: September 21–December 30 (Government Printing Office, 1905), 85–86.
  6. Jeffers Lennox, North of America: Loyalists, Indigenous Nations, and the Borders of the Long American Revolution (Yale University Press, 2022), 19–59.
  7. “The First National Constitution: The Articles of Confederation (Mar. 1, 1781),” in Colonies to Nation, 1763–1789: A Documentary History of the American Revolution, ed. Jack P. Greene (W. W. Norton, 1975), 434; and Eliga H. Gould, Among the Powers of the Earth: The American Revolution and the Making of a New World Empire (Harvard University Press, 2012), 2.
  8. Ford, ed., Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774–1789, 2:182.
  9. Benjamin Franklin, “Proposed Articles of Confederation,” Founders Online, ca. July 21, 1775, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-22-02-0069; and Yale Law School, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Avalon Project, “Treaty with the Delawares: 1778,” https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/del1778.asp.
  10. Alan Taylor, The Divided Ground: Indians, Settlers, and the Northern Borderland of the American Revolution (Alfred A. Knopf, 2006), 111–22.
  11. Paul H. Smith, “The American Loyalists: Notes on Their Organization and Numerical Strength,” The William and Mary Quarterly 25, no. 2 (1968): 269, https://www.jstor.org/stable/1919095.
  12. Thomas Paine, “The American Crisis I,” in Foner, The Complete Writings of Thomas Paine, 1:49, 53.
  13. Lisa Ford, The King’s Peace: Law and Order in the British Empire (Harvard University Press, 2021), 24–57; and The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, vol. 24, Race (2013), under “Lynching and Racial Violence.”
  14. Maya Jasanoff, Liberty’s Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World (Vintage Books, 2012), 21–53.
  15. “To Suppress ‘Rebellion and Sedition’: Royal Proclamation of Rebellion (Aug. 26, 1775),” in Greene, Colonies to Nation, 1763–1789, 259.
  16. John Lind, An Answer to the Declaration of the American Congress, 4th ed. (London, 1776), 131–32; and David Armitage, “The Declaration of Independence and International Law,” The William and Mary Quarterly 59, no. 1 (2002): 52–54, https://www.jstor.org/stable/3491637.
  17. Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Concord Hymn,” July 4, 1837, Poetry Foundation, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45870/concord-hymn.
  18. John Shy, A People Numerous and Armed: Reflections on the Military Struggle for American Independence, rev. ed. (University of Michigan Press, 1990), 163–79.
  19. Richard B. Morris, The Peacemakers: The Great Powers and American Independence (Harper & Row, 1965), 275–86, 412.
  20. Winslow C. Watson, ed., Men and Times of the Revolution [. . .], 2nd ed. (New York), 204, 206.
  21. “Peace: The Treaty of Paris (Sept. 3, 1783),” in Greene, Colonies to Nation, 1763–1789, 418–22; and Gordon S. Wood, Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789–1815 (Oxford University Press, 2009).
  22. “Peace,” in Greene, Colonies to Nation, 1763–1789, 421; James H. Kettner, “Subjects or Citizens? A Note on British Views Respecting the Legal Effects of American Independence,” Virginia Law Review 62, no. 5 (1976): 945–67, https://www.jstor.org/stable/1072398; and Katherine A. Kellock, “London Merchants and the Pre-1776 American Debts,” Guildhall Studies in London History 1, no. 3 (1974): 109.
  23. Eliga H. Gould, “Sheffield’s Vision: The American Revolution and the 1783 Partition of North America,” in Making the British Empire, 1660–1800, ed. Jason Peacey (Manchester University Press, 2020), 161, 174–76.
  24. Eliga H. Gould, “As Far as the Canaries? Longitude, Prize Law, and the Anglo-
    merican Armistice of 1783,” presentation, After 1776: Opportunities, Shocks, and Dangers, Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies, Charlottesville, VA, October 2024.
  25. “Peace,” in Greene, Colonies to Nation, 1763–1789, 422.
  26. Maurice Morgann, “Note on Article 7 of Definitive Treaty,” 1786, vol. 87b, fol. 391v, William Petty, 1st Marquis of Lansdowne, 2nd Earl of Shelburne Papers, William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan; and Cassandra Pybus, Epic Journeys of Freedom: Runaway Slaves of the American Revolution and Their Global Quest for Liberty (Beacon Press, 2007), 1–6, 61–69.
  27. “Peace,” in Greene, Colonies to Nation, 1763–1789, 422.
  28. Michael A. Blaakman, Speculation Nation: Land Mania in the Revolutionary American Republic (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023).
  29. Charles R. Ritcheson, Aftermath of Revolution: British Policy Toward the United States, 1783–1795 (Southern Methodist University Press, 1969), 75–81.
  30. Charles F. Hobson, “The Recovery of British Debts in the Federal Circuit Court of Virginia, 1790 to 1797,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 92, no. 2 (1984): 179, https://www.jstor.org/stable/4248711; and Herbert E. Sloan, Principle and Interest: Thomas Jefferson and the Problem of Debt (Oxford University Press, 1995).
  31. John Adams et al., “Preliminary Peace Treaty Between the United States and Great Britain,” Founders Online, November 30, 1782, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/06-14-02-0058.
  32. Peter H. Lindert and Jeffrey G. Williamson, Unequal Gains: American Growth and Inequality Since 1700 (Princeton University Press, 2016), 85.
  33. Curtis P. Nettels, The Economic History of the United States, vol. 2, The Emergence of a National Economy, 1775–1815 (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1962), 60–61, 87; and Thomas M. Doerflinger, A Vigorous Spirit of Enterprise: Merchants and Economic Development in Revolutionary Philadelphia (University of North Carolina Press, 1986), 263.
  34. National Archives Foundation, “Treaty of Fort Stanwix,” https://docsteach.org/document/treaty-fort-stanwix/.
  35. Ned Blackhawk, The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History (Yale University Press, 2023), 176–204.
  36. “Toward the Creation of New States: The Northwest Ordinance (July 13, 1787),” in Greene, Colonies to Nation, 1763–1789, 473; and Eric Hinderaker, Elusive Empires: Constructing Colonialism in the Ohio Valley, 1673–1800 (Cambridge University Press, 1997), 228, 231, 236, 242, 247, 255–56.
  37. Merrill Jensen, The New Nation: A History of the United States During the Confederation, 1781–1789 (Vintage Books, 1950), 282–301.
  38. Frederick W. Marks III, Independence on Trial: Foreign Affairs and the Making of the Constitution (Louisiana State University Press, 1973), 52–95.
  39. Thomas Paine, “A Supernumerary Crisis,” in Foner, The Complete Writings of Thomas Paine, 1:237–38.
  40. Melancton Smith et al., An Address from the Committee Appointed at Mrs. Vandewater’s on the 13th Day of September, 1784 [. . .] (New York, 1784), https://name.umdl.umich.edu/N14462.0001.001.
  41. David A. Weinstein, “Rutgers v. Waddington: Alexander Hamilton and the Birth Pangs of Judicial Review,” Judicial Notice 9 (Summer 2013): 27–34, https://history.nycourts.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Judicial-Notice-09.pdf.
  42. A Collection of Acts or Laws Passed in the State of Massachusetts Bay [. . .] (London, 1785), 34–35.
  43. Leonard L. Richards, Shays’s Rebellion: The American Revolution’s Final Battle (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002).
  44. “State of Claims of British Merchants Trading to America,” British National Archives, February 5, 1791; and Amanda Bowie Moniz, “A Radical Shrew in America,” Commonplace, April 2008, https://commonplace.online/article/a-radical-shrew-in-america/.
  45. W. Jeffrey Bolster, “‘The Absurdity of Nonresistance’: Reexamining Article 10 of New Hampshire’s Constitution, the ‘Right of Revolution,’” Historical New Hampshire, Fall 2007, https://nhhistory.org/object/58069/the-absurdity-of-nonresistance-reexamining-article-10-of-new-hampshire-s-constitution-the-righ.
  46. A Summary Review of the Laws of the United States of North-America [. . .] (Edinburgh, Scotland, 1788), 6, 45.
  47. David C. Hendrickson, Peace Pact: The Lost World of the American Founding (University Press of Kansas, 2003); and Alexander Hamilton to James Duane, September 3, 1780, Founders Online, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Hamilton/01-02-02-0838.
  48. “The First National Constitution,” in Greene,  Colonies to Nation, 1763–1789, 429.
  49. US Const. pmbl.
  50. US Const. art. VI.
  51. Gould, Among the Powers of the Earth, 139–44.
  52. Stanley M. Elkins and Eric McKitrick, The Age of Federalism: The Early American Republic, 1788–1800 (Oxford University Press, 1993), 406–14.
  53. Bradford Perkins, The Cambridge History of American Foreign Relations, vol. 1, The Creation of a Republican Empire, 1776–1865 (Cambridge University Press, 1993), 105–7, 111–46.
  54. Felix Gilbert, To the Farewell Address: Ideas of Early American Foreign Policy (Princeton University Press, 1961).
  55. Daniel Hulsebosch, “Independence and Union: Imperfect Unions in Revolutionary Anglo-America,” in Mark Philip Bradley, ed., The Cambridge History of America and the World, vol. 1, 1500–1820, ed. Eliga H. Gould et al. (Cambridge University Press, 2022), 504–7.
  56. Lawrence S. Kaplan, The United States and NATO: The Formative Years (University Press of Kentucky, 1984), 1.
  57. Gerald Stourzh, Benjamin Franklin and American Foreign Policy (University of Chicago Press, 1954), 142–46, 183–84.
  58. Mark Peterson, The Making and Breaking of the American Constitution: A Thousand-Year History (Princeton University Press, forthcoming), pts. III and IV.
  59. Walter Russell Mead, “The Jacksonian Tradition and American Foreign Policy,” The National Interest, Winter 1999–2000, 5–29, https://www.jstor.org/stable/42897216.
  60. James E. Lewis, The American Union and the Problem of Neighborhood: The United States and the Collapse of the Spanish Empire, 1783–1829 (University of North Carolina Press, 1998); and Deborah A. Rosen, Border Law: The First Seminole War and American Nationhood (Harvard University Press, 2015).
  61. Thomas Jefferson to John Holmes, April 22, 1820, Founders Online, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-15-02-0518.
  62. Amy S. Greenberg, A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln, and the 1846 U.S. Invasion of Mexico (Vintage Books, 2012); and Eric Foner, The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution (W. W. Norton, 2019).
  63. Rudyard Kipling, “The White Man’s Burden,” February 4, 1899, Kipling Society, https://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poem/poems_burden.htm.
  64. George Washington to Catharine Sawbridge Macaulay Graham, January 9, 1790, Founders Online, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-04-
    02-0363    ; and Yuval Levin, American Covenant: How the Constitution Unified Our Nation—and Could Again (Basic Books, 2024).
  65. Washington to Graham.
  66. Elkins and McKitrick, The Age of Federalism, 590.