2. • In April 1775 fighting had
broken out in
Massachusetts.
• Of the total American
population of 2.5 million in
1776, one fifth—500,000
men, women, and
children—was enslaved.
• The Declaration of
Independence set forth a
philosophy of human rights
that could be applied not
only to Americans, but also
to peoples everywhere.
3. • In the eighteenth-century Anglo-
American world, writers in this
country-opposition tradition were
especially fearful that executive
power—particularly as it operated
under the ministries of Sir Robert
Walpole—was corrupting
Parliament and English society in
order to erect a fiscal-military state
for the waging of war.
• The confidence of the
Revolutionaries in 1776 in their
popular representative legislatures
was remarkable.
• These provisions, together with the
substantial powers granted to the
Congress, made the United States
of America as strong as any similar
republican confederation in
history.
• The major European nations
refused to open themselves freely
to American trade
