Period 3: Revolution, Confederation, and Constitution, 1754–1800
From war to independence
The French and Indian War (1754–1763) removed France from North America but doubled Britain's debt and its empire. The Proclamation of 1763 restricted settlement west of the Appalachians, angering colonists and speculators. Grenville's Sugar Act (1764) and Stamp Act (1765) began direct taxation; colonial resistance invoked 'no taxation without representation,' organized boycotts, and formed the Stamp Act Congress. The Townshend Acts, Boston Massacre, Tea Act, and Intolerable Acts escalated conflict. Common Sense (1776) and the Declaration of Independence reframed the dispute as universal natural rights. Saratoga brought the French alliance; Yorktown (1781) and the Treaty of Paris (1783) secured independence and territory to the Mississippi.
Confederation to Constitution
The Articles of Confederation created a league of states with no taxing or commerce power. Shays' Rebellion exposed weakness; the Constitutional Convention produced the Great Compromise, the Three-Fifths Compromise, and a stronger federal structure. Ratification debates produced Federalist and Anti-Federalist arguments, and the Bill of Rights answered Anti-Federalist fears. Hamilton's financial program, the Whiskey Rebellion, and the first party system defined the 1790s, while the Alien and Sedition Acts provoked the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions.
Traps: the Declaration did not establish a government; the Articles were replaced, not amended. The Three-Fifths Compromise counted enslaved people for representation, not citizenship. The Bill of Rights originally bound only the federal government.
Worked example: if asked why the Stamp Act provoked more resistance than the Sugar Act, note that it was an internal, direct tax on printed matter, hit influential printers and lawyers, and followed 1763-so it combined economic burden with constitutional principle.
Rule of thumb: trace the sequence-war debt, taxation, resistance, coercion, independence, then state-building.