What happened at the end of the Revolutionary War? Here’s how Americans set up a brand-new country once the fighting ended

The Continental Army and French forces trapped the British at Yorktown, forcing a surrender on Oct. 19, 1781, after which peace talks led to the Treaty of Paris in 1783. The war left the economy in shambles, killed 25,000 Americans, and drove over 60,000 Loyalists, including more than 15,000 formerly enslaved people, out of the country.

The wartime Articles of Confederation proved too weak for peacetime, lacking a president, court system, foreign policy mechanism, or taxing power, which contributed to an economic crisis in the 1780s. Delegates meeting in Philadelphia in 1787 wrote the Constitution, establishing a two-house legislature, an executive branch, and a Supreme Court, which took effect in 1789, followed by the Bill of Rights in 1791.

Voting in 1789 was restricted to white, male, adult landowners, excluding Quakers, Jews, and Catholics as well as everyone else, and the Naturalization Act of 1790 limited citizenship to white people. Full rights extended slowly afterward: the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments between 1865 and 1870, the 19th Amendment for women in 1920, and the Snyder Act granting Native Americans recognition only in 1924.

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