July 4, 2026, will mark the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and, therefore, of the United States of America. In political terms, the Declaration may be said to have marked the beginning of the American founding era. The end of that era might be most plausibly marked by the enactment of the United States Constitution—which was written in 1787 and ratified the following year. The years that separated the adoption of these two documents were tumultuous and consequential. But the thread that connects them is clear and firm. The Constitution was very much a product of the lessons learned during the Revolutionary War and in its wake.
The Constitution, like the Declaration, came together in a Philadelphia summer, in what we now call Independence Hall. The two documents were debated and approved in the same room, 11 years apart. Those were seven years of war and four years of peace. The American Revolution began as a revolt against abuses of power by a regime that was not sufficiently accountable to the people it governed. By the war’s end, in 1783, the Revolution was understood as a struggle for democratic self-rule. The forms of government established in the states during and immediately after the war therefore tended to be radically democratic: strong legislatures kept close to the people and a kind of thoroughgoing majority rule.
There was widespread agreement in the new United States that these republican forms were necessary, and in some respects that they were key to what the Revolution was about. But especially in the first few years of peace, it also became increasingly clear that these modes of government were not working well. They didn’t govern effectively, and they also didn’t protect the rights of the people effectively. The populist governance of those years regularly devolved into mob rule, which led to widespread instability and dysfunction in government and to some instances of outright political violence.
The Constitution was therefore produced in light of both fears of excessive government power and fears of disorder and mob rule. The experience of the revolutionary era sent the authors of the Constitution searching for a balanced medium between two excesses of political power. And it helped them understand that such a medium would have to be a mode of political life, not just a structure of institutions—it would be sustained as a dynamic tension more than a fixed balance.
The conflicting, if not contradictory, demands that the Declaration of Independence makes of government were a key reason for that approach. The Declaration illuminates the truth that we are all created equal, asserts that governments are instituted to protect the equal rights of all, and insists that such a government can rule only by the consent of the governed. As a practical matter, consent is achieved by majority rule. But what if the ruling majority wants to invade the rights of a minority or an individual citizen? How can one government balance majority rule with minority rights? This, in no small measure, was the question the Constitution was created to answer. The challenge posed by the Declaration was the challenge picked up by the Constitution. We therefore cannot hope to really understand our constitutional order without grasping its connection to the ideas and events of the American Revolution.
Better understanding those ideas and events, and their ongoing significance to us, is precisely the purpose of the American Enterprise Institute’s “We Hold These Truths: America at 250” initiative, an ambitious celebration of the founding of which this volume forms a part. Over several years leading up to the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, we have invited scholars both within AEI and from other institutions to take up a series of themes important to understanding the American Revolution. These scholars represent a variety of fields and viewpoints, so they will approach each of these themes from various angles. The papers they produce are being published in a series of edited volumes intended to help Americans think more deeply and clearly about our nation’s origins, character, and prospects.
The American Revolution and the Constitution is the seventh of those books. Its chapters began as papers presented at a conference held at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC, on June 17, 2025. Other volumes in the series consider the American Revolution in relation to other themes, such as democracy, religion, natural rights, and global affairs. In each case, our goal is to help reintroduce readers to their nation’s history, thereby enabling them to maturely appreciate the reasons for celebrating the extraordinary milestone of its 250th anniversary.
In the chapters that follow, five eminent scholars of history, law, and government consider how we ought to understand the Revolution’s relationship to the constitutional order under which we live.
Jack N. Rakove describes the intense flurry of constitution-making that swept through North America from 1765 until 1787 and shows how it prepared the ground for the Constitution.
Akhil Reed Amar traces how the American Revolution pulled together the disparate strands of republicanism, constitutionalism, independence, and union and how the combination ultimately came to be expressed in the Constitution.
Adam J. White illuminates the connection between the Declaration’s principles and the Constitution’s conception of the rule of law and the nature of administration.
Colleen A. Sheehan highlights the deep ties between the political visions of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and reveals their common roots in a classical understanding of natural law.
Harvey C. Mansfield explores the meaning of the concept of “regime” in the Western political tradition and asks whether the American Revolution and the Constitution might be said to have produced a new kind of regime.
All of these authors suggest that the American Constitution, and indeed the American experience itself, could never be understood apart from the Revolution that gave rise to our nation.
