In what way did the delegates to the 1787 Convention represent a new generation of American leaders?

The process whereby colonists in North America broke free from the British Empire to found the United States.

Despite the political upheavals of the previous century, Britain itself in the middle of the eighteenth century remained a rigidly hierarchical society, still rooted in its feudal past. By contrast, on the other side of the Atlantic, Puritanism and the experience of frontier life had generated anti-authority, individualistic attitudes, while the absence of an aristocracy and the ease with which land could be acquired made possible a degree of social mobility unheard of in Europe. The original charters establishing the colonies had provided for self-government, and, subsequently, successive British administrations allowed the colonists great freedom to conduct their own affairs. By the mid-eighteenth century a large proportion of adult white males in the colonies possessed the suffrage while also enjoying the privileges of a free press and some freedom of religious worship. The colonies, in other Words, had grown apart from the mother country, their inhabitants had begun to think of themselves as Americans, and, not surprisingly, they proved unreceptive to attempts to bring them to heel.

British politicians, for their part, with the ending of the Seven Years War (1756-63) turned their attention to the problems of administering an empire. In order to meet the large debt incurred by war with France and the continuing costs of protecting the western frontier and defending the colonists from the Indians the British government sought new sources of revenue. Believing, not unreasonably, that those same colonists should contribute to the funds necessary for their defence Parliament passed the Revenue Act, otherwise known as the 'Sugar Act', in 1764, and the Stamp Act in 1765. The latter required the affixing of a stamp, which had to be purchased, to a wide range of legal documents, newspapers, pamphlets, playing cards, and other items.

It was the fact that this and other legislation was introduced solely for the purpose of raising revenue that made it so offensive to Americans. As they saw it, this was to infringe one of the most hallowed principles of good government, the right of free people not to be taxed without their consent. Accordingly, the representatives of nine colonies at the Stamp Act Congress of 1765 agreed a number of resolutions, including one asserting, 'That it is inseparably essential to the freedom of a people, and the undoubted rights of Englishmen, that no taxes should be imposed on them, but with their own consent, given personally, or by their representatives'. On the same occasion the Congress rejected categorically the claim of the British government that no basic rights had been violated because colonists enjoyed 'virtual representation' in the House of Commons.

The Stamp Act proved unenforceable and, a year after its passage, was repealed, but Parliament remained unwilling to forgo its claim to paramountcy and continued to pass legislation based on that assumption. The Quebec Act 1774 was the most threatening, empowering as it did the French Canadians and any Indian allies to settle in the Ohio and Mississippi valleys, thus potentially cutting off the expansion of the colonies to the west. Growing resentment in the colonies led to the convening of the First Continental Congress in 1774. This gathering claimed for the people of the colonies the right to enjoy without infringement 'life, liberty and property'; rejected again the relevance of virtual representation in their case; and repeatedly asserted their entitlement to all the rights and immunities of freeborn Englishmen. The first shots in the Revolutionary War were fired at Lexington in April 1775 and the Declaration of Independence formally breaking the link between the colonies and Britain was signed on 4 July 1776.

The American Revolution was essentially a political revolution. Even though the revolutionaries in this case were motivated in part by a concern for property rights this was not a conflict primarily about economics, but about the values of democratic government. This was also, in several senses, a conservative revolution. Many of those prominent in the movement towards independence were most reluctant to break the link with Britain and only accepted the need to do so as a last resort. They also insisted that in resisting the British government they were merely asserting their rights as Englishmen-that it was the government in London that had first disrupted the status quo by enforcing illegitimate measures in the colonies. Furthermore, unlike subsequent revolutions in France and Russia the American version involved no fundamental reordering of existing economic or social structures.